When suddenly he heard, or thought so, nigh,

A supernatural agent, or a mouse,

Whose little nibbling rustle will embarrass

Most people as it plays along the arras."

For some minds fear has a strange fascination, and scenes such as Llanberis or the pass of Glencoe grow singularly attractive at nightfall, more particularly when the thunder rolls, and the lightning flashes, and the rain comes down in torrents. I remember your having said, in one of your essays last summer, dear reader, that you regarded a thunderstorm, a raging sea, and a lady in a passion with her husband, as the three most sublime spectacles in nature, and I am altogether of your opinion. Probably in each case the sublimity is enhanced by the sensation of terror which each inspires.

AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS.

No. I.

I

CAUGHT the London, Brighton, and South-Coast

train in the very nick of time, and after a swift, smooth ride of about two hours, turned up at Havant, whence there is a branch line to Hayling Island. Arrived at Havant, you find yourself seized with an irresistible inclination to indulge in the verbal turpitude of a pun. You turn to your fellow-traveller, whoever he may be, and ask him whether he has been at Havant before. He answers, in the innocence of his soul, "I havn't," whereupon you express your indignation that he should

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"There you go again!"

indulge in so petty a joke. "I am surprised, sir, that you should make a jest of a civil question." "I protest, sir, I havn't," he replies. you say, in a towering passion. And so the angry recrimination continues, till the whistle from the engine of the local train warns you to give up such foolery. "Avant avaunt!" you exclaim to yourself, as you plunge into your carriage, and, "lighting up," surrender yourself to the gentle reveries induced by nicotine. The little railway from Havant to the island is the funniest little railway in the world. It is a single line,-I do not mean thereby that it is unmarried, but simply that it has no double set of iron trams. It is a serpentine sort of line, and, winding its way circuitously over a long wooden bridge and through a marshy district, indulges in such a series of tortuous escapades that I have called it the "Colly-Wobble " Railway, by which name I desire it to be known to posterity. The engine-driver is a stately, elderly gentleman, to whom one feels instinctively disposed to raise one's hat. The guard, a fairhaired man, with a straw-colored beard, is a clever, civil. fellow, who has "all his work cut out for him," as the saying goes, seeing that he has to act not only as guard, but also as ticket-collector and porter. Nay, more, he has to officiate as station-master as well at Langston and North Hayling, the stations at both those places resembling sentry-boxes, wherein dwelleth no sentry nor any human being to look after the arrivals and departures of the train. All is done by the many-handed guard, who is an army of officials in himself. On reaching the terminus at Hayling, I was greeted with a huge smile from the portrait of Mr. Perry Davis, the Pain-killer, and I was informed of what I knew before I

left town, to wit, that Mr. Taylor, of Pimlico, is provided with wagons and horses for the removal of my furniture. Let the Sheriff of Middlesex take note of it. But strange to say, I was left hopelessly in the dark respecting the name of the newspaper which has the largest circulation in the world. Nay, more, though I have spent several days in the island since then, I have never once laid eyes upon an advertisement giving any such information, a fact to which I invite the particular attention of the brilliant, and, as I had fondly imagined, ubiquitous journal whose head-quarters are in Fleet Street. If the railway from Havant to Hayling Island is the funniest little railway in the world, the omnibus which conveys you from the station at South Hayling to the Royal Hotel is, beyond question, the funniest little conveyance of the sort to be found in any country from the Equator to either Pole. This I say in full remembrance of the New Forest omnibus, which, until I visited Hayling, I had imagined to be the strangest vehicle of the kind on earth. But the Hayling omnibus beats it hollow. It is as round as a pumpkin and as red as blood, and so low in the roof that a man of average stature sitting inside must bend his head in the most obsequious manner. I have ridden in all manner of vehicles, from a wheelbarrow, in which I was once rolled-oh, how luxuriously!—for half a mile along a country road by a being of boundless goodness and beauty ineffable, to a Lapland sledge drawn by dogs and pursued by wolves, and thence to a tea-colored brougham in the Park, but never shall I forget my ride in the little Hayling omnibus, stooping, as I was, all the way. Right glad was I to get out of it, for "Frangi, non flecti," is the motto of my house.

Hayling is a charming place, its charm consisting in its peacefulness. It is the very home of peace-a veritable island of tranquil delights, the delights dwelling altogether in the tranquillity. I do not remember to have ever before set foot in so quiet a spot having any pretensions to civilization. There may be, and doubtless there are, other islands utterly uninhabited, and therefore still quieter, but for an inhabited and even populous island within humanity's reach, it is the serenest, most noiseless, most throbless region that fancy can conceive of or language depict. From Holborn to Hayling! What a transition! It is a change akin to that from the lion to the lamb, or from a roaring sea to a calm, sequestered lake, or from a London lodginghouse to a hermit's cave, or from wedded life to chambers in the Albany. Hayling is a "tight" little island, not, I should imagine, in the slang sense of intoxication -for ale-houses are few and far between, and I found, to my bitter mortification, that at the "Royal" and only hotel they were out of bottled beer-but rather in the signification of tidiness and trimness. It is richly cultivated, not a rood of soil being left untilled, and it is studded with comfortable farm-houses and cosy little homesteads. There is no trace of poverty anywhere; everybody seems well off, and "take it easy" appears to be the rule of conduct with the islanders. How slowly they walk and talk, and what a blessed air of repose is around them one and all! Nobody seems to be in a hurry. Nobody seems to have any business on hand that needs the slightest anxiety or activity. Nobody puts himself out. Everybody takes it easy, and it does him good. Compare this with the uproar and turbulence of town,-the hurry-scurry of the Strand, the

toil and turmoil of Ludgate Hill, the tearing to and fro in the City, the clamorous confusion of Charing Cross, the roar of Temple Bar! Give me Hayling Island, where not a mouse is stirring, where the people seem to be moving about in a delicious dream, where every living creature is bound in a spell of repose, where the robins sing cheerily from every leafless branch, and where, save their voices, no other sound salutes your ear than that of the waves breaking in picturesque disarray upon the velvet sands. Yes! give me Hayling Island, and you may have High Holborn and welcome, if you list. It is a depraved taste and very wicked, I dare say, but the longer I live the fonder I get of the country. I can't help it, but, say what you will, I must prefer a flower to a paving-stone, a tree to a chimneypot, the sea to a sewer.

The Island of Hayling is divided into two parishes, North Hayling and South Hayling; and as in the great continent across the Atlantic, so likewise upon the coast of Hampshire, the Northerners and Southerners are not without their mutual little jealousies. How the Island came to be called "Hayling" is a mystery which the learned in local etymology may possibly have fathomed, but which passes the comprehension of the illiterate like you and me, dear reader. Can it be that it is always "hailing" there? or that the people when they meet are "hailing" one another? or that they are "ailing?" or that they are "ale-ing?" or that hay and ling are both to be found in the place? I know not, I care not. All I know is that it is a right pleasant little island, and if you don't think so, you would do well not to go there. What care I? Both in the North and South the Haylingers are an honest, hospitable race all